Mac Tips Daily! #132 - PRAM

Occasionally Macs go wacky.. so to speak. Inside your Mac is some non-volatile ram called PRAM - short for Parameter Ram. It stores a few settings inside it that enables your Mac to function. However, sometime these might get corrupt, so a quick troubleshooting technique is to reset the PRAM. You will lose a few settings such as your Time zone, volume, etc.. but they are all negligible. You wold be amazed at what doing this can fix -- it fixes stuff not even on Apple's list of things it's supposed to fix! Resetting PRAM is not the first thing I pull out of the arsenal. I always try repairing permissions, cleaning caches, etc... but if none of that works, clear the PRAM. Here's how to do it: Shut down your Mac. Locate the keys: COMMAND OPTION P R Once you power on the Mac, before the gray screen appears - hold these keys down together until your Mac chimes 4 times. After it chimes for the fourth time, you can release them, and your Mac should start up as normal. Note: Apple's documents say if you have a RAID, don't do this, or you could have trouble booting up. Most people don't have a RAID.. and if you do.. you know it. To read more about it, check out these official Apple documents. Mac OS X: What's stored in PRAM? Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM Mac OS X: Computer won't start up after resetting PRAM